Hi all,
Well a while back I got a TEC chiller and tried to use it for cooling my AMD XP 2500+. I tried several setups and figured out that the chiller wouldn't handle cooling at low temps. So I went back to e-bay and found a Via Aqua chiller with a 1/4 hp comp. I have seen this unit for sale at
www.aquastealth.com and it sounds like it can easily cool a proc. I picked one up on E-bay and just hooked it up. As you can see from my pics the initial test is just that. I still need to get some hardware to properly connect everything. I just wanted to see if it would cool. To my surprise, even with little insulation the system cools prety good. At the moment the units temp controller goes down to 41 F. My socket temp is at about 76F/24C. Once I finsish insulating I should get better results. The previously mentioned web site also sells a modified version of this product that is capable of cooling to 0 C. That said my plan is to determine how they get it to reach this temp, then to do the mod my self. It's the least I can do considering so many people have built there own chillers. I may consider doing this later once I learn more about how they work. For now I am busy waisting a large chunk of change. When I got this unit I imediately took it apart and looked for a simple way to mod the temp controller. The web site only charges about $30 more for the modified version of this unit. That said I will assume that the change they are making to the unit is a small one. The internal control of the unit consists of a temperature relay and power supply. There was no adjustment pots or anything that I could turn to simply lower the set level. I also tried puting in my own thermistor and tried to use it in a warmer location. This would have been the quick and dirty aproach to getting the unit to go lower then 41 F. Of course the temp readout would then be off. The thermistor I put in caused the unit to display an error mesage. I guess it is a different type of thermistor that they are using. The stock thermistor is installed inside the main water storage tank. My new plan is to find a new temp relay and install that instead. If I can find one that will go to or below zero I should be good to go. Does anyone have any advice on temp relays or know anything about temp sensors that I could use to solve this problem? I have been around water cooling and pelt cooling for quite some time but am a newb to chillers as you can tell! I put a letter in to aquastealth to see if they would tell me what they did but I am not sure they will be willing to give me that info. Just so you know aquastealth is also becooling. Anyway here are some initial pics of my incomplete test setup. No flames please this is a cooling post. heh...
